After the victory over the Midianites, Elazar the High Priest
explained to the soldiers how to kasher and purify the metal
utensils captured in the war:

“As far as the gold, silver, copper, iron, tin and lead are
concerned: whatever was used over fire must be passed through fire,
and it will be clean. However, it must be then purified with the sprinkling water.” (Num.
31:22-23)

The Midianite vessels had become defiled in battle, through
contact with death. They needed to be purified, by sprinkling over
them water mixed with the ashes of the red heifer. This is the
standard process of purification, a process that takes a week to
complete.

Instant Purity

There exists a second way to purifying utensils — more drastic, but
immediate. One simply makes the utensil unusable by boring a large
hole in it. Then it is no longer considered a vessel. When the
puncture is mended, it is as if a new utensil has been formed,
without any residual impurity.

The Talmud (Shabbat 15b) relates that the Hasmonean queen Shlomzion
(circa 100 BCE) once held a celebration in honor of her son.
Tragically, one of the guests died during the party. As a result,
the royal cutlery and dishes became ritually impure. The queen
wanted to avoid waiting a week to purify them, so she commanded
that the utensils be rendered unusable, and then forged anew.

The rabbis informed the queen, however, that her shortcut was not
acceptable. Rabbi Shimon ben Shatach — the queen’s brother — had
already ruled that impure utensils that are broken still retain
their original impure state after they are fixed.

What led the Sages to make this decree? They were afraid that the
ritual of red heifer ashes would fall into disuse if everyone used
the faster method of boring a large hole and then fixing the
implement.

How to Rectify an Imperfect World

There is, however, a deeper significance to Rabbi Shimon Ben
Shatach’s decree. The laws of ritual purity may seem distant from modern life. But
upon closer examination, they can have much to teach us — about
imperfections in the world, and in each individual.

There are two ways to purify oneself from past follies. The more
drastic method is to totally destroy those areas into which evil
has rooted itself, and then rebuild from the raw materials left
over. This was the method used in the time of Noah, when God purged
an utterly corrupt world with the devastating waters of the Flood.

An individual may similarly choose to eliminate deeply rooted
personality defects by afflicting his body and soul. With the
breakdown of his powers, the evil is also destroyed. Then he can
rebuild himself in a moral, just fashion.

Given the rampant level of violence and immorality that have become
so entrenched among the human race, the world certainly deserves to
have been destroyed. Yet, God in His kindness established another
method of purification. The preferred path is to gradually rectify
moral defects over time, so that even those unbridled forces may be
utilized for good. Only in extreme cases is it necessary to purify
through destruction.

The rabbinical decree not to purify utensils by breaking them now
takes on a deeper significance. We should not become accustomed to
this drastic form of purification, which weakens constructive
energies as it purges impurities. It is better to use the slower
method of red heifer ashes, thereby allowing the vessel to become
pure while retaining all of its original strength.